CBS: Tsarnaev laptop recovered

posted at 9:21 am on May 2, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

The missing laptop in the Boston Marathon bombing has been found, according to CBS and WTOP. Authorities hope that the laptop might provide clues to any other accomplices, or at the least to the pattern of radicalization that led to the bombing:

Investigators found the bag last week in a New Bedford landfill,CBS News’ Elaine Quijano reported. Sources tell CBS News the laptop has also been recovered.

So far, there’s no evidence the three had knowledge of the Boston plot in advance. However, one of them did say that about a month before the attack Dzhokhar Tsarnaev casually mentioned he knew how to make a bomb, Quijano reported.

None of the men entered a plea in court Wednesday. If convicted, Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov could face up to five years in prison. Phillipos could face up to eight years.

WTOP quotes from NBC’s Pete Williams:

A laptop tied to the Boston bombing suspects has been recovered and could provide important clues as authorities look into how the suspects were radicalized.

Pete Williams, NBC justice correspondent, says the FBI has the laptop, although investigators have not spoken publicly about the computer.

Both Williams and Bryan Bender, national security correspondent for the Boston Globe, spoke with WTOP on Thursday about the latest developments in the investigation.

“The laptop could be critical in learning how they became radicalized and how they learned to make the bombs,” Bender says. “(Investigators believe the suspects) became more religious, they became more inspired to do this attack through internet sites, perhaps by communicating with some jihadists overseas.”

The laptop would always have attracted the attention of investigators, but the fact that the Tsarnaevs discarded it makes it a lot more interesting. There are easier (and less expensive) ways to erase data from a hard drive than by dumping it in a landfill if all you want to do is avoid embarrassment over your web-surfing history. Throwing away a working laptop is a rather extreme act for a college student presumably living on a limited budget, and that means Dzhokhar had something on there he really needed to hide.

Whatever that was, it will come as a surprise to Tsarnaev’s former fling. Mother Jones interviewed a UMD student who claims she had a (very) brief romance with the bomber, and says she’s shocked by his involvement. He never expressed any strong religious views with her:

She got to know the group, she said, while hanging around campus with them, smoking pot and listening to music. She says her romantic relationship with Tsarnaev lasted for about two weeks. “I met him standing outside a building and honestly, his face was enough to capture my heart,” she explained, noting that lots of women fawned over him. “I walked right up to him and I was like, ‘Oh my God, you are adorable. Can we hang out?’ I’m very forward.”

Her nascent romance with Tsarnaev soon soured, though, after he invited her to come to his dorm room alone. “He wanted to go further than I did, and that made me uncomfortable, and I realized that that’s not the kind of person that I wanted to be around,” she says. “I don’t think that’s necessarily being a terrorist. I think that’s just called being a hands-y teenaged boy.”

She said she remains skeptical that Tsarnaev had a religious motive for carrying out the attack, as has been suggested in the context of his older brother’s apparent radicalization. “He never mentioned anything about religion,” she said. If he had been devoutly religious, he probably wouldn’t have become romantically entangled with her, she added, because she practices a different Eastern religion. “I just can’t see him being a radical jihadist just because of the nature of who he was. I don’t doubt that he did it, but the ‘why?’ behind it—I’m having difficulty believing the news.”

If anything, Tsarnaev’s friend Kadyrbayev may have been more religious, in her view. She described a falling out she had with Kadyrbayev a few months after meeting him. “I went out to a party and he made a comment about how my dress was kind of inappropriate because it was kind of revealing,” she says. “Other than that, I never got the vibe that he was a very conservative fellow.”

She told MJ’s Gavin Aronsen that Dzhokhar was definitely the leader of his little clique, which may explain why the three ended up as accessories after the fact:

Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov, the woman said, were part of a group of about five Russian-speaking friends at the university whom Tsarnaev was never without. “They all sort of idolized Jahar,” she said, using the name she and others knew Tsarnaev by. “Dias was probably the one closest to him.” She said that of the friends, Tsarnaev was the most popular and in touch with campus social life. “I cannot speak to the nature of their relationship because of the language barrier, however I did observe that Jahar was always the leader in his group.”

That may help explain why the two would’ve helped Tsarnaev dispose of evidence after the marathon bombing, as authorities now allege. Whether they did so, and what knowledge they may have had about the bombing, remains unclear.

But was it entirely after the fact? The FBI will be understandably interested in that question. CBS’ Jack Ford says that the initial charges here will be used for leverage to get more information from the three accomplices about Tsarnaev, but don’t think that they aren’t looking at why these three were so interested in erasing evidence after the bombing:

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As noted on Ace yesterday, they knew enough about bomb making to ditch the Vaseline along with the emptied fireworks. Maybe the use of Vaseline as a bomb making component is common knowledge in glorious nation of Kazakhstan.

Odds are if he’s trying to bed you, he’s not going to want to let you know during the seduction phase he’s also into subjugation of women and spousal abuse. That may explain why Tamerlan “didn’t appear religious” during their relationship.

(On the other hand, if you’re taking your story to Mother Jones — one of the outlets that was in deep hope this had been done by Tim McVeigh, Jr. — you and the interviewer both might be inclined to want to believe this wasn’t about Islamic fundamentalism, and he wasn’t religious, but just a passionate, hot-headed alpha male who somehow took a wrong turn, probably due to a culture that was inhospitable to accepting a young immigrant as one of its own.)

She says her romantic relationship with Tsarnaev lasted for about two weeks. “I met him standing outside a building and honestly, his face was enough to capture my heart,” she explained, noting that lots of women fawned over him. “I walked right up to him and I was like, ‘Oh my God, you are adorable. Can we hang out?’ I’m very forward.”

How did these three nice misunderstood foreign kids know about the backpack with gun powder…the laptop with incriminating data…and a host of other things…unless they were privy to the plot or actually were part of the plot?

It’s also an ingredient in bomb making, which begs the question, how did his homies know this?

Blake on May 2, 2013 at 9:37 AM

Tru dat.

Anything at this time is simply speculation…but I’m sure these guys have the living crud scared out of them at this point…shackles and chains in front of a judge can do that to a kid…and hopefully it won’t be too difficult to figure this whole mess out.

However, one of them did say that about a month before the attack Dzhokhar Tsarnaev casually mentioned he knew how to make a bomb, Quijano reported.

How does that topic – ‘casually’ – come up in conversation? If someone tells you that, don’t you ask ‘Where did you learn how to build a bomb?’ and ‘Why would you need to learn how to build a bomb?’

Also, isn’t it strange that these kids knew to remove the Vaseline from Tsarnaev’s dorm room? If I’m an ‘innocent,’ 19 year-old, college kid, who stupidly and naively decides to help out my terrorist buddy by removing incriminating evidence, I look around his room and see the computer, the fireworks and maybe some notebooks, papers, letters or whatever. If I saw Vaseline, I wouldn’t think to remove that. I mean, why would I? Unless, of course, I knew that it was a key ingredient used in making certain types of IEDs.

So, if I get a text message that says: ‘Come to my room and take whatever you want,’ I don’t think Vaseline is going to be part of the ‘whatever I want’ unless I know how to make a bomb.

As noted on Ace yesterday, they knew enough about bomb making to ditch the Vaseline along with the emptied fireworks. Maybe the use of Vaseline as a bomb making component is common knowledge in glorious nation of Kazakhstan.

Anything at this time is simply speculation…but I’m sure these guys have the living crud scared out of them at this point…shackles and chains in front of a judge can do that to a kid…and hopefully it won’t be too difficult to figure this whole mess out.

JetBoy on May 2, 2013 at 9:43 AM

They should count their blessings. They have their lives and both their feet.

Throwing away a working laptop is a rather extreme act for a college student presumably living on a limited budget, and that means Dzhokhar had something on there he really needed to hide.

They three amigos were told by loser #2 to take what they wanted. If I’m a poor college student studying half the world away, I don’t throw away a laptop computer. I’ll use it myself, or at least sell it for maybe a couple hundred dollars.

Story doesn’t add up. And I didn’t know about adding Vaseline to bomb making.

It’s also an ingredient in bomb making, which begs the question, how did his homies know this?

Blake on May 2, 2013 at 9:37 AM

I’ve known about Vaseline and gunpowder for homemade bombs since I was 13. Didn’t know the mixture or what else to do, but I was aware that they were used together. I was told this by my friend when we were in the 8th grade. His father had a machine shop and they liked to tinker with all sorts of things. 25+ years later and neither of us have done anything with that knowledge.

Another thought that comes to mind is, exactly how much Vaseline was found? Many homes have Vaseline in their medicine cabinet. Unless forensics can find traces of Vaseline in the bomb residue, defense might be able to get it removed as evidence.

As for the computer, I hope they do find useful information on it. I’m amazed at the stupidity of criminals vis-a-vis their computers. If you’re using your computer to do criminal activity, especially something like this, one would think you’d be smart enough to spend just a little time to make sure it couldn’t be used against you. There are free hard drive wiping programs out there. Run 7 passes and voila. Just for kicks, run a good magnet over it and/or burn it. Smashing it might not work well enough – as Lanza/Sandy Hook showed.

“I went out to a party and he made a comment about how my dress was kind of inappropriate because it was kind of revealing,” she says. “Other than that, I never got the vibe that he was a very conservative fellow.”

“I met him standing outside a building and honestly, his face was enough to capture my heart,” she explained, noting that lots of women fawned over him. “I walked right up to him and I was like, ‘Oh my God, you are adorable. Can we hang out?’ I’m very forward.”

Then this;

“He wanted to go further than I did, and that made me uncomfortable, and I realized that that’s not the kind of person that I wanted to be around,”

I’m confused.

What did he want to do that made you uncomfortable add a goat for a three-way?

They better not let any Saudis leave the country during the investigation. Even if there is nothing on the laptop, any possible cell members wouldn’t know that at this point and might be looking to get out of town. Unless the laptop contains red herring material and was meant to be found to cause misdirection. Probably not, though, since they weren’t smart enough to keep their Russian buddies from getting involved after the fact.

How does that topic – ‘casually’ – come up in conversation? If someone tells you that, don’t you ask ‘Where did you learn how to build a bomb?’ and ‘Why would you need to learn how to build a bomb?’

Resist We Much on May 2, 2013 at 9:46 AM

Of course, a different time/era… my father told me how when he was a preteen/teen he and his brother used to make their own fireworks, blockbusters and such. A family member would yearly buy and mail them a small keg of gunpowder – this was the late 50’s mind you. Times changed and they could no longer get gunpowder by mail. My father never did anything with this information.

I know military veterans who if I asked would probably confirm that they know how to make bombs. I suspect there are many who do know how to make bombs, the difference is what you do with that information.

I’ve got a buddy right now getting his PhD in explosives engineering. He trips sensors every time he goes to an airport.

If someone tells me they know how to make a bomb, I’m going to look at them as a whole person and decide from there what to do with that information. That said, clearly the brother’s friends had no problems with the brother’s views. If you or I were told the same thing by someone we knew, depending upon who they were we might either ignore the information or determine it was time to call authorities and warn people.

…and that means Dzhokhar had something on there he really needed to hide.

Whoa, wishful projection Ed, tone it down. I agree the circumstances are suspicious but there are other possible and unrelated reasons to discard it.

BTW, who said it was a working laptop when it was discarded? The Press??? There no credibility issues there!!!

Boring, slogging, mind numbing investigative steps are the order of the day, interviews, and more interviews, compilation and coordination of information looking for nuggets. As much as I make fun of them, the FBI’s very, very good at that.

As always beware of the sensational break through announcements and predictions. The are mostly (including mine ;-)) wrong.

Of course, a different time/era… my father told me how when he was a preteen/teen he and his brother used to make their own fireworks, blockbusters and such. A family member would yearly buy and mail them a small keg of gunpowder – this was the late 50′s mind you. Times changed and they could no longer get gunpowder by mail. My father never did anything with this information.

I know military veterans who if I asked would probably confirm that they know how to make bombs. I suspect there are many who do know how to make bombs, the difference is what you do with that information.

I’ve got a buddy right now getting his PhD in explosives engineering. He trips sensors every time he goes to an airport.

If someone tells me they know how to make a bomb, I’m going to look at them as a whole person and decide from there what to do with that information. That said, clearly the brother’s friends had no problems with the brother’s views. If you or I were told the same thing by someone we knew, depending upon who they were we might either ignore the information or determine it was time to call authorities and warn people.

Logus on May 2, 2013 at 10:16 AM

For me and my buds it was rockets. I grew up in the pre-Estes age, so we tried making our own rocket engines. Not hugely successful, only some got air. Used real homemade gunpowder, matchheads, various combinations of aluminum powder, sugar, sodium chlorate, etc. The real challenge was a survivable nozzle.

Let’s stop making these people into average college students. I’m sure, like the rest of us, they saw the news reports. They saw their little Jihadi pal on the news as wanted by the FBI and they are laughing about it. They’re first reaction was to destroy evidence that would get the terrorist “in trouble.”

I think the times ARE different. Also, allegedly, he dropped this bombshell (no pun intended) a month ago, but they’ve been friends for a long time. If someone I knew for a while told me he or she knew how to make a bomb, I’d ask…just out of curiosity. It’s not something that most people know how to do. Maybe, he did tell them and that was why they knew to remove the Vaseline. Or, maybe, there is more to this story than we know. Either way, it is just a weird thing for one person to drop into a conversation, casually, and then for the others to drop and move on, as it appears from what we have been told thus far, happened.

Empty CO2 cartridges and matchheads, long metal plumbing pipe for initial guidance, worked like a charm, not much lift capability but it could punch a hole in a cinder block wall…..don’t ask me how I know, that particular neighbor’s still alive

She got to know the group, she said, while hanging around campus with them, smoking pot and listening to music…….. “I walked right up to him and I was like, ‘Oh my God, you are adorable. Can we hang out?’ I’m very forward.”…….. “He wanted to go further than I did, and that made me uncomfortable, and I realized that that’s not the kind of person that I wanted to be around,” she says. “I don’t think that’s necessarily being a terrorist. I think that’s just called being a hands-y teenaged boy.”

Well, I think we all know what kind of a person she is. Her parents must be so proud.

Another thought that comes to mind is, exactly how much Vaseline was found? Many homes have Vaseline in their medicine cabinet. Unless forensics can find traces of Vaseline in the bomb residue, defense might be able to get it removed as evidence.

…

Logus on May 2, 2013 at 10:06 AM

But if gunpowder or other explosives residue is found on or inside the Vaseline jar (whose sticky contents tends to attract stuff off people’s hands) that’s going to be more incriminating, even if they can’t find petroleum jelly traces in the bomb residue.

But even for somebody you knew for a while, would you sanitize their room ahead of the FBI? There is more to this story than the “goofy college student” theme their lawyers were pushing yesterday.

Happy Nomad on May 2, 2013 at 11:02 AM

No, but I wouldn’t sanitise anyone’s room ahead of a visit from the FBI. In fact, the moment that I saw the photograph on the telly, I would have called the authorities, but that is what separates me from the widow and the three college students. My sympathies and loyalties would lay with the victims, my fellow citizens, and my country, not terrorists, my friends, and my 7th century death cult.

Robert Stahl, an attorney representing Kadyrbayev, said his client denies the allegations and added that Kadyrbayev assisted authorities in their investigation.

“He is just as shocked and horrified by the violence that took place in Boston as the rest of the community is,” Stahl said. “He did not have anything to do with it.”

Hey Bob-

Your client went into that room, realized his buddy was involved in the bombing and, instead of calling the police decided to get rid of evidence. Even if he didn’t pull the trigger, Kadyrbayev did have something to do with the horrific bombings.

But if gunpowder or other explosives residue is found on or inside the Vaseline jar (whose sticky contents tends to attract stuff off people’s hands) that’s going to be more incriminating, even if they can’t find petroleum jelly traces in the bomb residue.

But if gunpowder or other explosives residue is found on or inside the Vaseline jar (whose sticky contents tends to attract stuff off people’s hands) that’s going to be more incriminating, even if they can’t find petroleum jelly traces in the bomb residue.

Speaking of affidavits — did you know that you have to submit an I-134 affidavit of support if you are bringing a relative into this country through immigration? You have to swear that you will not allow this immigrant to become a public charge. And even if you get married and then divorced, you are still responsible for that immigrant.

To be honest, if I saw Vaseline in someone else’s room, particularly a dorm room, even if they had specifically asked me to remove it, I wouldn’t want to touch it…not without disposable tongs and a hazmat suit.

She got to know the group, she said, while hanging around campus with them, smoking pot and listening to music.

“He wanted to go further than I did, and that made me uncomfortable, and I realized that that’s not the kind of person that I wanted to be around,” she says.

So Dzhokhar was willing to blow up a bomb and injure about 100 innocent strangers because they weren’t Muslim enough for his (or his brother’s) tastes, but it’s OK for him to smoke pot and try to have sex with a girl he’s known for less than two weeks. A really wonderful upright moral religion he’s got there.

But not really surprising, since Mohammed himself married a 14-year-old girl, after previously marrying a woman much older than himself.

A laptop tied to the Boston bombing suspects has been recovered and could provide important clues as authorities look into how the suspects were radicalized.

Pete Williams, NBC justice correspondent, says the FBI has the laptop, although investigators have not spoken publicly about the computer.

Gee, if the FBI finds some contacts on the Jokar’s computer who helped him and his brother make the bombs, or have ties to other terrorist groups, what’ll that do to Homeland Insecurity Secretary Napolitano’s assertion that the Tsarnaev brothers acted alone?

All this talk of whether or who “was religious” is going to become a red herring when it comes to terrorism. There’s a faction of secularists who imagine that it’s religion (of any kind) that radicalizes (in the sense of “being dangerous”). And of course they’re dead wrong.

Islam seems to have “hooks” for sociopaths who seem to find in it a way to sublimate their misanthropy, their malcontent with interpersonal relationships, their cultural alienation — whatever the heck the raw emotive material is that impels their descent into abandoning humanity as valuable.

A Christian committing such acts could hardly be said to have been inspired to do so by Christ, since he’d first have to deem the beneficent Jesus a chump. But something about Muhammad inspires murderous rage in this type of person if anyone even draws a satirical cartoon. Unlike those who worship Christ, those who venerate Muhammad imagine that vile acts honor him (and Allah) supremely. If someone insults the Son of God, Christians generally sigh, pray for the offender, and carry on. If someone insults the merely human Muhammad, [some] Muslims royally freak out, apparently imagining that Allah demands blood.

The contrast could not be more striking. Again – something about Islam attracts and/or brings out the sociopathy — nay, the psychopathy — in some people. They’re merely thugs or dangerous nut jobs — but in the end they imagine they’ve aspired to and, in their acts, are attaining the highest their “faith” can achieve in service to Allah.

Then they wax paranoid that Jews are sending squirrels across the border as spies. Ergo, some imams may be the lunatics running their own private asylums.

Good to see a pot smoking college girl knows what a terrorist acts and looks. And for him to assimilate into society (having sex with girls) in order to hide his true convictions isn’t what they are all about. And do you really believe a woman who says she propositioned him, smoked his pot and he had the nerve to try to get her into bed? Common sense and decency in college is something truly lacking.

If he had been devoutly religious, he probably wouldn’t have become romantically entangled with her, she added, because she practices a different Eastern religion.

How inexcusably ignorant of her, and she calls herself a college student….it boggles the mind, how uninformed and thoroughly stupid so many college kids are…muslim guys consider most mon-muslim girls/women something close to ‘prostitutes’, good for that kinda fun and then discard… their religious devoutness have never prevented muslim dudes from fooling around with ditzy, brain dead, willing non-mulsim girls, au contraire, probably in their warped, f…ed up minds they believe they will be rewarded by allah or whoever if they inflict pain of any sorts on an infidel, regardless of who they are…they despise women and they consider them inferior, period, but even more so non-muslim women…so, any non-muslim girl who gets involved with a muslim man in my opinion is badly in need of a brain or…yeah, a loving father who owns a shotgun :)

If there was one wish I could have with Ed and the rest, it would be to get them past their “western” point of reference when dealing with people from other cultures and countries.

The sooner we realize they think differently from us, the sooner we won’t start looking for our kind of excuses for their behavior.

The “leader” of the gang isn’t the reason why his friends covered for him. They covered for him because they did not disagree or have a problem with the bombing.

This is their way of handling things. Spend some time on the Internet looking up old videos of Chechnens cutting the heads off of young Russian conscript soldiers- FOR the shock effect! I remember the first time I saw it during a work related operation. I was ill for days.

Years ago, I was told how it worked in organized crime who was scared of whom when it came to violence, the same principle should apply here.

The Italian Mafia was scared of the Irish mob, the Irish mob was afraid of the Eastern European mobs, the European mobs were wary of Russian mobs, the Russians worried about the Jamaicans. Each mob was scared of the next mob because of their penchant for irrational violence.

Here, we have jihadists of all stripes saying the same thing when the Chechens show up on a battlefield. “Holy smoke, there goes the neighborhood! Now bad things are for sure going to happen!”

They don’t like the Chechens because they are afraid of them. So don’t discount the motivation for bad behavior being simply that it doesn’t bother them at all.

Is it surprising to this girl that he didn’t mention Islam when he was trying to get sex from her? That’s unusual if he was devout Muslim Jihadi? Like the 9-11 attackers who went to strip bars these guys live a duel life where they indulge themselves on the one hand and play Muslim holy warrior on the other.

The 3 kids did, when he was alreaday captured. It is not known if they did it to ‘help’ cover up, or per his instructions.

Schadenfreude on May 2, 2013 at 1:26 PM

Was it after Tsarnaev was caught, or after his picture was plastered all over the news? I just keep reading and hearing different versions all over. There’s definitely more to this than we know so far. At best, his friends may not have known in advance of the Tsarnaev brothers and their plot…but looks like they certainly figured it out after the fact and disposed of evidence…maybe even evidence that implicates themselves.

but looks like they certainly figured it out after the fact and disposed of evidence…maybe even evidence that implicates themselves.

JetBoy on May 2, 2013 at 2:20 PM

This is what is known…plus, that they lied to authorities about all of it, for days…until recently. They’ll be punished harshly for not telling authorities about bombing communication among them, hiding the backpack/laptop/etc., but especially for lying to the big guns…the latter will not be forgiven and is punished harshly.